Commodore resurrects the Amiga

Trent Nouveau, 1st September 2010

Way back in 1994, Byte Magazine proclaimed the Amiga had been so far ahead of its time that almost nobody - including Commodore's marketing department - could "fully articulate" what it was all about.

In 1996, John C. Dvorak of PC Mag declared that AmigaOS remained one of the "greatest" operating systems of the past 20 years, as it incorporated a small kernel with "tremendous" multitasking capabilities.

Indeed, the Amiga boasted an advanced custom chipset comprising several coprocessors, which handled audio, video and direct memory access independently of the CPU.

This innovative architectural design allowed the Amiga's primary processor to focus on other tasks, while granting the system a definite performance edge over its competitors for video-intensive applications and games.

Unsurprisingly, the Amiga's long-lived popularity prompted a number of companies to manufacture various iterations of the machines, such as Eyetech which sold Amiga hardware under the AmigaOne brand from 2002 to 2005.

Similarly, A-Cube is reportedly still selling a Sam440 PPC board designed to run the latest version of AmigaOS (4.1).

But now Commodore USA has become the latest contender to resurrect an old classic by producing a full line of AMIGA branded "AIO" (All In One) keyboard computers, under an exclusive worldwide license.

And guess what?

The new Amiga branded computers are slated to be fully AROS compatible, with Commodore USA's CTO Leo Nigro pledging to support the AROS open source community in "every way" possible.

"With the monumental strides that AROS has recently achieved, we realize the importance of accelerating this progress with funding that will enable this project to rapidly move forward and take it's rightful place at the forefront of desktop operating systems," he confirmed in a recent statement.

Commodore USA CEO Barry Altman expressed similar sentiments.

"[We have] taken a major role in not just supporting the future Amiga market with our many new products, but also in providing a new beginning for the enormous existing Amiga community.

"Our relationship with them, along with our support for the elegant, robust and lightweight AROS desktop operating system, will ensure that they and future customers will benefit from our new and exciting vision and enable the legacy Commodore and Amiga culture to flourish.

"We look forward to bringing these new products to market and welcoming a whole new generation of computer users to the Commodore and Amiga experience."

I don't know about you, but I sure as hell am jonesing to play some of those classic Amiga games and can barely wait to give those old apps a whirl!

Unfortunately, we don't have a spec breakdown, MSRP or actual picture, so I'll leave you with this demo as a condolence prize. Yes, I know it wasn't coded on an Amiga (shoutout to the PC), but hey, I'm feeling really nostalgic right about now!